James Axler – Exile to Hell

When Salvo completed reading off the assignments and the rest of the shift filed out, Kane approached the lectern. “Tell me why.”

Salvo didn’t so much as glance up at him. “Why what?”

“Pit patrol.”

“It’s a standard duty assignment. You should know that by now.”

“Why the two of us?”

Salvo collected his papers and pushed past him. “Why not? Where is it written that two senior Magistrates can’t be assigned to supervise a PPP?”

Without another word, he turned and strode out of the briefing room. Kane turned toward his friend, raising his hands in a gesture of exasperation.

Glowering, Grant said, “This is your fault, you know.”

A young, slender man of Asian extraction moved toward Kane. Falteringly he said, “I’m Boon. It’s an honor to be working with you.”

Grant sighed and stood up. “Let’s get this honor over with.”

They marched out into the corridor, Boon a bit behind, trying to match their impatient, long-legged stride. They stopped briefly at the tech desk so Boon could pick up a scanner. It was a small, cylindrical gadget, not more than four inches long with a two-pronged sensor probe at one end.

At the private elevator, they showed the sentry on duty their badges. The sentry punched in the numbers on a miniature three-digit keypad, and the door panel rolled aside. The elevator was one of six shafts on C Level that dropped directly to the Pits. The largest of the shafts was positioned in the armory and could accommodate an armored wag filled with a Magistrate squad, just in case a Pit outbreak had to be quelled.

After they stepped into the car, the sentry, with studied casualness, pressed a control toggle and set the lift for a fast descent. As the platform seemed to drop from beneath their feet, Boon reacted to the sudden sensation of free fall with a startled murmur. Grant and Kane affected not to notice the feeling of their stomachs forcibly climbing into their throats.

Conversationally Kane said, “Remember the last PPP we worked?”

Grant replied flatly, “You mean when old Guana was paying hard jack for Mag body parts?”

“What?” Boon asked faintly.

“A weird fad,” said Kane. “Pit dwellers tend to bore easy, need their diversions. What was itsix gold creds for a Mag nose, eight for a tongue?”

“Twenty for a set of balls,” remarked Grant calmly. “Getting those was a real bitch.”

“What?” asked Boon again. “When was this?”

Kane gravely glanced over at Grant. “Last year, right?”

“I never heard of that fad before,” said Boon.

“No wonder,” Grant replied. “Triple bad for morale. Salvo did his best to cover it up, but”

The platform bumped to a stop. Boon stumbled forward, his face almost slamming against the door panel. It slid aside, and he froze as the air of the Tartarus Pits filtered into his nostrils. Kane and Grant exchanged grins. With a hearty backslap that pushed the young man out of the car, Kane announced, “Let’s be careful out there. The price of balls may have gone up.”

The base of the Administrative Monolith was completely enclosed by a walled compound made of six feet of rockcrete. The twenty-foot-high walls were rigged with proximity alarms. The sun, at its zenith, glinted from the sharp points of the coils of razor wire stretched out over the tops of the walls. The massive sec door was made of vanadium alloy and powered by a buried hydraulic system.

The impregnable perimeter hadn’t been built simply to protect the tower from invasion by outraged Pit dwellers. Far below, in a sublevel, rested the primary output station that supplied the ville’s electricity. Supposedly an underground artery of the Kanab River generated the power, but there were stories that indicated old atomic engines were the true source of Cobaltville’s electricity.

A Magistrate guard, in full body armor, stood beside the sec-door controls, lovingly cradling his Copperhead in his arms. When he saw them approach, he keyed in the code numbers and pulled up the control lever. The gate rumbled and squeaked, opening like an accordion, folding to one side. It was so heavy it took nearly a minute for the sec door to open just enough to allow them to step outside of the compound.